As a Steelers fan, I've experienced my share of heartbreaking losses over the years. I've seen them lose multiple AFC Championship games and two Super Bowls. I've seen a 5-11 season, a 6-10 season or two, and I've witnessed a couple of non-playoff years following Super Bowl Championships. When you're a fan, you have to experience your share of heartbreaking moments and disappointing seasons; it goes with the territory.
However, I just can't wrap my head around the Steelers overtime loss in Denver on Sunday night. It was just so unexpected. And that's probably why the loss to the Broncos is so hard to take. Did I expect them to defeat the Patriots this Saturday night? Well, their injury situation became downright laughable by the time the game ended Sunday, and even though I probably would have been just as depressed after a loss to Belichick's charges, I don't think I would have been totally stunned.
When you add the shock to the depression and sadness that a playoff loss normally brings, well, that's why there are so many Steelers fans walking around in disbelief this week.
Maybe I should have seen this coming for a while. The Steelers were simply beat up by the time the playoffs started. Speaking of which, I read in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post Gazette that had the Steelers won on Sunday, in addition to center Maurkice Pouncey, their offensive line would have been missing Max Starks, who suffered an ACL tear, and possibly Chris Kemoeatu and Doug Legursky for the Patriots game. And when you add that to the injuries to Casey Hampton and Brett Keisel on the defensive line, as well as the many other injuries the team suffered down the stretch, it just wasn't in the cards for the 2011 Pittsburgh Steelers.
Maybe my memory is a bit skewed because of how last year unfolded, but the 2011 campaign never seemed as magical as 2010.
Everything about the 2010 season just seemed more enchanting. The trip my girlfriend and I took to the Hall of Fame in August was awesome, our voyage to training camp a few days later was great, and the season itself had a lot of really compelling story lines.
For starters, there was the four-game suspension that Ben Roethlisberger had to serve to open the year. After all the talk of gloom and doom during the preseason, the Steelers responded as a team and went 3-1 with Dennis Dixon and Charlie Batch taking turns under center, including an exciting overtime win vs. the Falcons in week one. There was the controversy surrounding several fines against linebacker James Harrison for multiple flagrant tackles. Instead of tearing the team apart, this seemed to galvanize the entire organization, especially after Roethlisberger became a frequent target of excessive hits that weren't called, including having his nose broken by Haloti Ngata in a game in Baltimore.
There was nothing that compelling about the 2011 Steelers. In fact, the biggest story lines had negative connotations, like the 35-7 loss in Baltimore in week one that had everyone wondering if the team was "old, slow and done," Big Ben's high ankle sprain late in the year against the Browns, and James Harrison's one-game suspension after his helmet-to-helmet hit on Browns quarterback Colt Mccoy.
The only positive win that you could really sink your teeth into was Pittsburgh's impressive, 25-17, win over the Patriots on October 30th. Other than that, it was just a bunch of wins against the likes of the Seahawks, Rams, Jaguars, Colts, Browns and Cardinals.
The Steelers were a much better team at home than they were on the road in 2011, and maybe I dismissed their road struggles throughout the year because I was in denial and really wanted to believe they could rectify their problems on the road once the playoffs started. That obviously didn't happen as the team went one and done.
Maybe the 2010 Steelers just had more luck on their side. Remember the controversial call at the end of the Miami game that went in Pittsburgh's favor? Remember the touchdown pass that Bills receiver Stevie Johnson dropped in overtime? If Pittsburgh loses either one of those games, they don't win the division, and they probably don't make it to the Super Bowl.
The Steelers didn't seem to benefit from much luck in 2011, but maybe that's because they didn't really create much of it on their own.
And that brings me to the turnover situation. The 2011 Pittsburgh Steelers were -13 in the giveaway/takeaway department, and yes, that was helped greatly by the seven turnovers the offense committed in the week one loss to Baltimore, but even if you don't count those turnovers, the offense still averaged nearly 1.5 a game in the other 15. And the defense didn't make up for it, only creating 15 turnovers the entire season.
The 2011 Steelers defense spent the majority of the year near the top of the NFL, and finished number one by the end of the season, but they just didn't make the splash plays that they did in 2010. Early in the year, I wrote an article on Behind the Steel Curtain about the Steelers turnover situation, and how teams with opportunistic defenses have been the ones competing for and winning Super Bowls in recent years. In 2010, the Steelers finished +17 in the turnover department and made it to the Super Bowl. In 2009, they finished -3 and missed the playoffs.
Included in those 15 turnovers, the defense only recovered four fumbles the entire season and only came up with one defensive touchdown. Maybe the sack totals being down (35) compared to 2010 (48) had something to do with it. The lower sack total can easily be attributed to the fact that both Lamarr Woodley and James Harrison missed significant portions of the season with injuries and a suspension, but it still doesn't change the outcome.
Still, though, the Steelers were pretty stingy on defense, and amazingly, after many months of worrying about the secondary this past offseason, the unit finished the year with the number one ranked passing defense in the league.
The offense was, once again, a big source of angst among Steelers fans in 2011, and for good reason. The Broncos offense was considered a joke during the year, and rightfully so, but for all of the playmakers that Pittsburgh had on offense, they only scored 16 more points than the Broncos in 2011. I've never been one to bash Steelers OC Bruce Arians, but the offense struggled to score points despite having a 4000 yard passer, two 1000 yard receivers, and a running back that was approaching a 1000 yards when he was injured in the final regular season game in Cleveland. The offense finished 20th in scoring, and they've been in the middle of the pack for years, so obviously, something is amiss.
Is it the play calling? Is it the offensive line?
I was listening to "Monday Evening Quarterback" on ESPN 970am the other night, and Steelers insider Bob Labriola was pretty adamant that the reason the Steelers offense isn't as productive as teams like New Orleans, New England and Green Bay is because Roethlisberger simply holds onto the ball too long, and if he would just take advantage of the rules that clearly favor today's quarterbacks and receivers by using quick passes up and down the field, the offense would be way more productive.
The games against Tennessee and New England, where Roethlisberger used a quick, short passing attack to pass for a combined 622 yards and seven touchdowns in the two games, certainly lends some credence to what Labriola was saying the other night.
Back to that playoff game in Denver. It's amazing how everything that haunts a team throughout the regular season generally comes home to roost in the postseason.
The Steelers were victimized, once again, by the injury bug when Max Starks, Hampton and Keisel left the game.
On offense, the team failed to score touchdowns early on after moving the ball in the first quarter and had to settle for two Shaun Suisham field goals; Jerricho Cothery and Mike Wallace each dropped passes that could have, if not gone for scores, changed the momentum significantly; Roethlisberger threw a bad interception that led to a field goal in the second quarter; and on the last offensive possession of the season, with the game tied and the team getting close to field goal range, there were break downs in the offensive line, and Roethlsiberger was sacked twice, giving the team no shot at a game-winning field goal as time ran out.
As for the defense, Tim Tebow wasn't sacked the entire day, and he was barely disrupted or confused as the unit failed to generate any significant pass rush. And, yes, the defense did come up with a Willis Mcgahee fumble late in the game that ultimately led to the Steelers tying the score at 23, but early in the first quarter, with the Steelers leading, 3-0, the defense failed to come up with a Mcgahee fumble after a great play by Troy Polamalu. If the Steelers get the ball there and make the score, 10-0, things could have been a lot different.
But the thing that ultimately did the Steelers in was the defense's shocking failure to stop Tim Tebow through the air. I'm not going to complain about Dick Lebeau's strategy of selling out to stop the run, but maybe he should have tweaked it in the second half after Tebow demonstrated the ability to complete deep passes. Maybe Lebeau should have rolled help Ike Taylor's way, who clearly had the worst day of his professional career after having maybe his finest season.
Oh well, the Steelers lost, and you can't win every year. And it's not like I'm not grateful for their 12-4 season, because I'm more than appreciative.
I was getting kind of sick of the Steelers sleep-walking through the season following a Super Bowl, so it was nice to see them have a consistent year. But I can't help but wonder if the 2011 Steelers were just the 2009 team in disguise, aided by a schedule filled with the league's most delicious cream puffs. I suppose we'll never know.
Or, maybe the difference between the 2011 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 2010 squad was the outcome of two games played against the Ravens at the end of each season. Last year, on Sunday Night Football, the Steelers were trailing the Ravens, 10-6, late in the game when Troy Polamalu blitzed Joe Flacco and caused a fumble that the Steelers recovered and eventually turned into an Isaac Redman touchdown. The Steelers went on to win the AFC North as well as a first round bye. The Ravens were a wild card team despite having the same 12-4 record as Pittsburgh and eventually found themselves back at Heinz Field for a divisional playoff game that the Steelers would ultimately win, 31-24.
This year, late in a Sunday night game at Heinz Field in early November, the Steelers were leading the Ravens, 20-16, very late in the game before Joe Flacco led Baltimore on a 92 yard touchdown drive that was ultimately the difference in the AFC North as the Ravens won the division and a first round bye despite Pittsburgh finishing with the same 12-4 record. Pittsburgh had to enter the playoffs as a wild card, and ultimately limped into the off season after the overtime loss in Denver.
Maybe the Steelers could have found a way to make this season feel a bit more magical by pulling out a postseason win or two, but sadly, we'll have to wait another year for the magic to return.
Or maybe as my friend Keith Thomas from Steel Curtain Rising asked the other night in an email he sent me, was it all just a bad dream?
Thanks for the complement and the plug, Tony.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with you. This year the Steelers just couldn't seem to "get it together" when it mattered. That and the injuries devastated them.
I know "The Standard is the Standard" but you have to have live human beings to make that work, and those were in short supply the the time Tebow won in OT.
It just was't their year.